Resident Apps
Evidence Central App – Evidence Based Medicine Guidelines Instantly Available in Mobile Form [App Review]
The challenge of identifying and absorbing relevant medical literature will not abate anytime soon and the proliferation of services that purport to simplify or eliminate this problem for physicians is itself now becoming a distraction. The rapid adoption of web-enabled smart phones by physicians, such as the iPhone, is driving this dilemma from the theoretical realm directly to the bedside. The hope is that if relevant medical literature is immediately available at the point of care, physicians would be more inclined to use it.
At the same time, the mantra of practicing medicine that is evidence-based is ringing ever louder. Thus far, it seems to this reviewer that most physicians apply it most strenuously when criticizing other physicians’ decisions rather than applying it to their own practice. Nevertheless, large well-respected compilations like the Cochrane Abstracts are available and widely used. They offer well constructed summaries of evidence-based diagnostic and treatment guidelines for thousands of pathologies. It is into this nexus that the “Evidence Central” app enters. This review will cover the features of this recently released medical application, which is technically “free” in the App Store, but requires a paid subscription of $79.95 in order to actually use.
MedPage Today Mobile App Puts Breaking Medical News in the Palm of Your Hand [App Review]
MedPage Today’s motto is, “Putting Breaking Medical News Into Practice”. I’ve been a fan of the website, medpagetoday.com for a few years now because they provide great medical commentary in a short, concise manner. I call it “high-yield” reading. Their articles often highlight key papers from the New England Journal or other reputed journals. Another reason I’m a fan is because of their partnership with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to provide Continuing Medical Education(CME). A partnership with a well respected academic institution definitely gives me greater respect for their articles.
All the content from their website has now been brought to the iPhone platform, and the app is free! Although the application was released awhile back, it was recently updated with some nice additions. In this review of the MedPage Today Mobile App I’ll cover how to best utilize the features this free application provides.
iRadiology App Provides Massive Amounts of Radiology Content, and its Free [App Review]
A new radiology learning tool was just released in the App Store, the iRadiology App. This app has a catalog of over 500 radiology cases designed to help medical students and residents improve their plain film,CT, and MRI reading skills. The cases are derived from Dr. Gillian Lieberman, who is the currently Director of Harvard Medical Student training and Associate Director of the Residency Program at Beth Israel Medical Center. This legitimizes the content of the application. In this review we’ll discuss the application further and also show you how to turn on the “Zoom” feature built into the iPhone that will enable you to improve the utility of this medical app.
Optimizing Your Medical Practice Experience with the iPod Touch
To our readers:
We will be providing commentary and short reviews to medpagetoday.com two or three times a month. We feel honored to be included in their short list of talented and well respected bloggers. The following is a little clip from our first post titled, Optimizing Your Medical Practice Experience with the iPod Touch. Rest assured, we’ll keep the frequency of our posts and reviews the same on our site.
There has been a great deal of commentary profiling medical applications that are useful for healthcare providers. However, there hasn’t been much talk about how mobile medical applications can enhance the doctor-patient experience and in turn, help optimize your practice’s overall experience. In future posts, we’ll focus more on applications for medical providers, but this post will discuss applications centered around the physician-patient relationship.
We all know how busy clinic can be, and this leads to increased waiting times for patients. Understandably, patients often complain that this is the most frustrating time for them, and none of us likes walking in excessively late on an angry patient because we had to deal with another patient’s medical emergency. So how can this downtime be made more bearable and productive at the same time?
Here is where the iPod Touch comes in. It runs basically the same operating system as the iPhone, and the applications I’ll discuss work for both devices.
During a patient’s waiting time in the waiting room or exam room, you could give them an iPod Touch with some of the following applications pre-loaded.
FDA Drugs App Provides a Mobile Interface to FDA Drug Approval Data [App Review]
FDA Drugs is an iPhone application that functions as a mobile drug database. The user selects a drug and the application exposes brand and generic equivalent drug information, with the added twist of being able to display the actual FDA approval document.
The name is unfortunate as it implies that the application was developed by the FDA, which it is not. Rather, the developers draw on publicly available FDA data stores to display the label information for thousands of FDA approved prescription and over-the-counter drugs. When the label information is not stored inside the application, it displays a NIH website (“Daily Med”) where the user can search for FDA label information.
ECG Interpreter App – Does this get our heart beating? [App Review]
Current Clinical Strategies Publishing recently sent us some free promo codes for this app, ECG Interpreter(you may have noticed) and we were thrilled by the last app we reviewed by them, ACLS Advisor. So then naturally, we had high expectations for this medical app. ECG Interpreter is relatively inexpensive at $1.99(current price), but with so many ECG apps out there we wanted to know if this app was on par with similar applications and if it met our high expectations.
Three Free Useful iPhone Medical Apps [Recently Released]
Free medical applications for the iPhone are being released on a daily basis, but not all of them are useful. This isn’t a surprise since they are after all free to download. However, there are definitely some free medical applications worth downloading.
This will be a regular column on iMedicalApps.com, where we will periodically post commentary on recently released free medical apps that are actually useful from a physician, medical student, or any other healthcare providers’ perspective.
In this post I’ll focus on three free medical applications related to the following: clinical trials, Framingham scale, and a radiology teaching app.
Is the Instant ECG App Better Than the ECG Guide for the iPhone? We crown the best ECG app [App Review]
The interpretation of ECGs is a difficult art to master for medical students and house officers alike. We are all taught to keep to the “Dubin method” and work through each 12-lead study with consistent patience no matter how abnormal the ECG initially appears. A particularly talented cardiologist once told me that ECG interpretation is often equal parts evidence based science, art, and gut feeling. So how is one to navigate the complexities of ECG interpretation without getting overwhelmed? Instant ECG, a well polished ECG interpretation and study guide by iAnesthesia LLC, is how. Currently the app is on sale for $0.99 in the App Store. I have used this application for 2 weeks (although not on a cardiology service), and so far am extremely pleased with the results. I’ve also used the ECG guide, which was previously reviewed on this site. In the the conclusion I’ll discuss my favored app.
Need to run a code? There’s an app for that! ACLS Advisor [App Review]
There are few moments in medicine where your immediate actions lead to a direct, life altering result for your patient. Obstructed airways and anaphylactic reactions come to mind, but neither of those occur as often as a code (“code blue”, and I’m not talking about when the cold activated indicator on your beer lets you know it’s ready to drink).
Back in medical school, before we entered the wards 3rd year, our school made sure we were ACLS certified. I realized how lucky I was that my school taught such a rigorous ACLS course when I was doing an away rotation at another medical school and students were complaining about their lack of ACLS training. Enter the “ACLS Advisor – Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support” App (currently $5.99 in the App Store) from Current Clinical Strategies Publishing. This review will cover how this well organized and easy to use application walks you though various ACLS algorithms and then some.
